


Prince of Never, King of Nothing

by CorvidFightClub



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: BDSM, Blood, M/M, Multi, Possible Body Horror, Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 04:10:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7998076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFightClub/pseuds/CorvidFightClub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki, prince of Asgard, has fallen from Bifrost and is presumed dead. </p>
<p>If only it were so simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Started this yeaaaars ago for a friend. Takes place between the first Thor movie and the first Avengers movie. I pulled a little from what I could find about the comic version of the Chitauri and Thanos on the internets and ran with it. If it sounds made-up, it probably is. 
> 
> I checked off rape/non-con because there's a lot of non-consensual *stuff* that happens, but I'm not sure yet if rape is going to be one of them. 
> 
> As usual, I'm not here to make a buck, just having fun with a backstory Marvel isn't forthcoming with.

Loki explored the shape of the metal covering his mouth with a light touch, almost committed to memory by now. He’d fussed with the locking mechanism for nearly a day before giving up on removing the gag. He let his hand drop to his thigh, tilting his head back and attempting to stretch his jaw. No such luck. The contraption was well-fitted.

Snarling in his throat, Loki rose from the cot and paced the small room. He felt naked in the plain tunic and hose, positively bare without armor or even his leathers. 

He felt like an untried boy. 

Down the corridor, two doorways to the left, sat the Jotun ice casket, calling him softly. “Blood of Laufey, blood of Laufey...”

He felt like a relic, tucked away to gather dust. 

Though his final sentence had yet to be decided, the Allfather had been thorough in his orders. No armor, no weapons close to the cell. It had been the final insult when Odin’s hand had rested on his chest and pulled, divesting him of armor and magic in the same movement. It galled him to the quick how fast, how simple it was. 

It made the old man easier to hate. The anger was a different sort. A cold, slow-moving burn that made him raise his lip in disgust. The feeling removed him, made it all too clear. 

Little Loki brought home again by the scruff of his neck, tossed in the sitting corner until father was ready to forgive him. 

Loki shuddered as pain lanced through his arm, his fist planted against the wall, his breath hissing through his teeth. 

Even the title “war criminal” seemed to fit inside Thor’s shadow as heir to the Asgardian throne. 

As if such thoughts summoned the man, there was the sound of heavy footfalls down the corridor. Loki stayed as he was, only turning his head to watch Thor’s approach, hating every measured step, every glint off his armor. Most of all, Loki hated Thor’s expression. The troubled blue eyes, the furrow between his blond brows. He’d visited many times since Loki’s capture, sometimes pleading, trying to understand what he’d done to deserve such venom. Oftentimes Thor was silent, standing beyond the wall of power that kept Loki caged, as if expecting answers to questions he hadn’t asked. 

_ Just as well you keep me silenced, Thor Odinson _ , Loki glared.  _ You would depart with bleeding ears otherwise, you thieving lout.  _

Thor approached the transparent wall with his idiotic hang-dog expression. Loki straightened, ignoring the pain in his bleeding knuckles and facing Odin’s heir with his chin raised. 

Thor glanced up then, eyes remorseful. Then he smiled, reaching a thick hand out towards the magical wall. The wall parted with a snap and Thor slowly moved his way into the cell. “Very accommodating for a traitor.”

Loki felt his blood run cold. Not Thor’s usual boisterous voice but a quiet hissing, like that of insect parts clicking together. 

Despite the gag, Loki set his jaw, all the more aware of its hinderance with a Chitauri inquisitor in the cell with him. 

_ Had you not failed me, I would be king _ , Loki growled inside his head. 

The Chitauri smiled with Thor’s face. “We warned you. Fail us and suffer. I see no tesseract, no victory. You are forfeit, Loki of Asgard.” 

_ Coward. Had you the manhood, you could steal the tesseract yourself from those who guard it not two worlds away from here. _ It was then Loki felt his stomach curdle. Perhaps they’d already taken the cube. Perhaps, while not having the strength to take the tesseract, they sought the next best thing. 

An imprisoned exile king. 

Loki couldn’t help a step back. If he made enough noise it might bring the guards running. Fast enough? Likely not. Who would willingly protect a war criminal, here or anywhere?

“Kneel, Asgardian,” the Chitauri rasped, stepping towards him. 

_ You failed me! _ Loki cried out in the confines of his mind.  _ I did all that was asked for and it was you and your pitiful army that failed, not I. _ He moved backwards until his shoulderblades met with the wall.  _ Not I, you wriggling maggot. _

The Chitauri’s hand shot out, catching him by the jaw. “Kneel,” the creature said again, holding Loki’s face in Thor’s large hand. 

A pit opened in Loki’s stomach. It widened as his knees grew weaker. Swallowed him as he sank, his knees striking the floor.

_ Is this not simpler? _


	2. Two

He’d dreamed of falling often since then, since that moment at the remains of Bifrost when Odin threw him into the yawning mouth of nothing.

_ No, Loki.  _

Two words. They meant, “Never. Never you.”

And then he fell.

He recalled pain, hitting against things larger and more solid than he. Certainty that he was lost. The knowledge that he was alone. But nothing was so large or great than the assurance he would never be. 

Some indelible amount of time later, he opened his eyes to an alien sky overhead. Battered, he sat up. He felt heavy. Amazingly so. He shed his armor, the heaviest of his leathers, then rose in the darkness and walked. Hunger and thirst assailed him. He pushed forward. His lips cracked and bled. His guts tied themselves in knots. 

If never, then what now?

Arms wrapped around his middle he stumbled, found himself looking at the sky again. So vast, open. Uncountable stars and dark spaces between them. He could be sovereign of those empty places. The dark, the emptiness, it pushed inside him until he jammed the heels of his palms into his eyes and screamed. 

Never. Never you.

A prince of never. A king of nothing. 

 

***

 

The ground was hard and brittle beneath him, cracking in sharp pieces as he passed. The sound found its way into his teeth until he clenched them with each step. There was no sun, only two small, pale moons giving light to the desolate landscape. 

He thought of Asgard then. Even Earth. Both were far lusher than this place. The realms he had almost ruled--no,  _ had _ ruled. Loki shut his eyes, head down, refusing to look up at the sky threatening to swallow him. He had no ceiling, no tether. He might float away if he didn’t take care. 

Memories of Asgard haunted him; regal and golden. A crown of a capital. Clean, bright. Lost.

Then Jotunheim. Cold, sharp, but teeming with life. No succor for him there since turning the Bifrost’s power on the planet. 

Earth had surfaced for a while as a possibility, then bile rose in his throat, remembering the sentinel’s failure and the hammer he could not lift. 

Staring out at the cracked, gray expanse, Loki stopped walking, listening to the breeze shift feather-light bits of broken slate in his wake. The universe was vast. He only knew a small portion of it. But if he traveled there, took to his heels and ran for the first friendly planet, what then? Try to blend in, a small Jotun among the refuse of the cosmos. A relic living out his days in secret. 

What would he do? Had he asked himself the same question a week ago, he would have had some sure answer. A direction with a heading suitable for a fallen ruler. 

Now when he thought on it, the sky seemed too close, too hungry to take him.

Vengeance had been his ceiling. Yggdrasil had been his floor. Without either, there was no forward. 

Just nothing.

He thought he saw lights in the distance once but they were gone as quickly as they’d come. His imagination, most like. 

 

They found him not long after. He’d been hunched in a stand of pitted rocks out of the wind, dozing, when an electric whine reached his ears. 

Loki peered around the rock. Not far off two beings conversed in a language at once guttural and chittering. Moonlight showed scales, armor, blunt heads and sharp teeth. Loki felt the cold sureness of ice daggers in his hands. Lost he might be, but defenseless he was not. 

The creatures talked for a time, then took to their hovering mounts and continued on, sweeping the area. Leaving one hand still armed, Loki moved from his hiding spot, waited, then jogged into the gray openness. He was not a large man, but his height and long limbs would have trapped him in the rocks, an easy target. Better to be caught in the open. Better to fight with all he had than flounder around in a burrow like a rabbit trapped by hounds. 

It wasn’t long before the creatures gave chase. Skidding on the slate, Loki flung an ice dagger into the contraption it rode. It spun once and landed nose-first into the rock. The other still gave chase, this one shooting back now, blue blasts of power scorching the ground at Loki’s boot-heels. He planted a dagger into its forehead and gave a cry of elation when it toppled, then saw too late the line of lights on the horizon and coming closer. 

Loki pelted towards the fallen bodies, looking for weapons. One yielded a staff-like weapon--well enough. Palming it, Loki ran again, looking for a defensible position. His luck had fled; the landscape was barren and then suddenly fell away. He lurched back in time to keep from stumbling off the cliff into the rocks below. Whirling, new weapon in hand, he watched the lights draw near. The same hovercrafts as before, ridden by the same creatures.

The battle might’ve lasted moments, but for him it felt as though a millennia had passed before a blue blast of power struck him in the knee, then the shoulder. It came to fighting like animals, tooth and claw. Had he been less depleted he could have summoned doppelgangers. illusions, something to help him. 

A scaled fist struck him in the face and Loki fell into the pile of bodies at his feet. 

 

“What is this wretched thing I see before me?”

Skull pounding, Loki opened his eyes. A dome of stars arced over him, taunting as ever, framed by black stone and metal. Scaled creatures towered over him, the cold blue of their weapons casting highlights on armor and brutish faces. His hands were secured behind his back, making rolling to his knees all the much harder. The room spun alarmingly as he tried to make out the conversation. 

“Something new. Important.” Clicked the leader of the band. “It killed off the better part of my squadron.”

The creature they spoke to was smaller, dressed more formally in robes, his strange hands together inside his sleeves. “It looks like a cast-off to me,” the robed one said. 

A pile of clothing clang-thunked to the polished floor in front of them; Loki’s discarded leathers and armor. “Too finely dressed for a cast-off.”

The robed figure eyed the clothing, then turned his reptilian gaze to Loki with new interest. “Where do you come from?”

“Nowhere,” Loki replied. 

The robed creature bent close, showing his pointed teeth. “I think you lie.” 

He was dragged off to some dark room then, away from the gaping sky and into the depths, surrounded by stone and metal. 

The Inquisitor wasn’t so large as the brutes holding him still, but its form was still muscular and in its eyes gleamed malicious intelligence. Loki stood his ground as the Inquisitor examined him, touched his skin, his clothing, then tapped its long, clawed fingers on a metal table. 

Without a word, Loki’s captors wrestled him onto the table face down. He struggled,  felt one kick connect and the snapping of a neck when it did. Weight pushed his limbs down, then clamps were fastened around his wrists and ankles. They held him to the table as the guards cut away the rest of his clothing, leaving him bare and fighting not to shiver. "What are you doing?" he demanded with none of the venom he wished for. Something blunt and cold jabbed down at the top of his spine, forcing his chest against the cold table. There was a clicking noise then pain, sudden and blinding. He watched his hands convulse and strain through the stars in his eyes. Again and again, a press along his spine, a click, and pain like nothing else. The last ended at the rise of his tailbone. He sagged between the creatures as they pulled him from the table. His head dipped down to his chest, a sudden move, then he vomited bile onto the smooth, black floor. 

Warmth trickled down his back as they dragged him to some other room. Two thick posts stood at one end of the room, coming just to Loki’s hips as they shackled his hands to them. They left him swaying before a large chair some paces from where he stood. 

Loki fought to stay on his feet as two figures entered the room. One, the Inquisitor. The other a dark, hulking creature with strange purplish skin. The Inquisitor stood by as the large creature sat itself in the chair, rested back into the cushions, then moved one hand in a forward gesture. The Inquisitor bowed, then turned to Loki. 

So it began. Simple questions at first. His name, where he hailed from. What are you, they asked. When he did not answer, pain crawled into his limbs, scraped its claws through his stomach until he bent double, toppling into one of the pillars he was chained to. Between gritted teeth he answered, a king.

A king of what? Where? they demanded. 

They plied him with pain until a ragged answer was drawn from his throat. NOTHING, he howled as the ceiling grew close, stars dancing in his hazy vision. NOTHING. The stars had found him to devour him at last. 


	3. Three

A trembling next to his ear woke him. The room tipped at an angle until his vision settled. Loki lay curled in a small cell, lit by blue lights around the edges of the walls. He tried to rise and gasped at the sharp pain in his spine, severe enough that it made his empty stomach heave. Careful as he could, Loki reached one arm behind him, feeling along his back. His fingers encountered smooth, metal knobs placed along his spine, crusted with dried blood. His wrists now sported bands of segmented metal as well. He brought one wrist close to his face, trying to find the closing mechanism. Snarling, he gave up. Wherever it was, the lock was well hidden. 

The trembling came again through the floor. This time he recognized it as footsteps shaking the floor under him. A shadow passed under the door and he hated himself for flinching at it. Pushing himself up inch by slow inch, Loki got his feet under himself and paced the room with a stumbling gait. He had to move or else risk his muscles declining further. 

And movement focused him. Even if it brought memories with it. 

_ “Walk with me, brother,” Thor smiled, helping Loki up from a trampled mess in the grass. “You’ll feel better once you’ve got your blood warm.” _

_ Loki had given him a mirthless laugh and shown him the blood on his temple. “My blood is cold as it’s ever been. No amount of walking will fix it.”  _

Then, neither had known Laufey’s blood coursed through his veins. Less than Asgardian. A monster’s ichor sustaining the legend that mothers frightened their children with. 

Loki sagged against the wall for a moment, wiping his face against his arm. He had thought himself only a hairs width behind Thor. If he only could accomplish one greater thing, one wondrous deed to make all take note that the sons of Odin stood as one--not as heir and forgotten shadow--that he might be worth as much as Thor. 

_ Never. Never you.  _

 

It wasn’t long before the guards came for him again, dragging him from the cell with little thought to his injuries. Loki gritted his teeth as he stumbled between them.  _ Pay attention _ , he admonished himself.  _ See where they take you _ .

_ What does it matter? _ A poisonous whisper answered from another corner of his head.  _ You are nothing. _

The room they dragged him to was much the same as the one before, only the poles he’d been secured to were laying in splinters on the dark floor, a cracked divot in the smooth stone between them. The Inquisitor stood by as before, though the large dusky form was missing from its throne near the other end of the room. 

The Inquisitor reached out a long, clawed hand to touch him and Loki’s innards recoiled in remembered pain. Cold, scaled fingers gripped his face. “Kneel,” the Inquisitor hissed. When he did not, the fingers tightened and pain streaked from the small of his back and down his thighs, buckling Loki’s legs under him. Slow agony, inch by inch, until his bare knees met the floor. “Know your place, King of Nothing,” it mocked. “You’ve made a mess of this chamber and it is your first order to repair it.” 

Loki glanced at the destroyed poles, the cracked floor. He remembered pain, then a starry darkness descending on him, but nothing of such damage. Perhaps while he had passed out--

The Inquisitor threw him to the floor close to the edge of the small crater. “Do it well and perhaps I won’t have to punish you further.” 

Loki pushed himself to his knees, glaring. He called for his ice daggers, wishing to show this creature that even a king of nothing would not submit to such treatment. His magic grew close, then far away again as though it could no longer build itself enough to take shape. He clenched his fists, feeling the glowing shackles around his wrists. 

The Inquisitor smiled like a lizard. 

It took an hour, perhaps two before Loki couldn’t help a strangled plea for mercy. He lay in a shaking pile of limbs while one of the guards fetched a vat of dark tar. 

“There,” the Inquisitor said. “Use it. Spread it with those pretty hands of yours.” 

Still shaking, Loki pulled himself to his knees, trying to ignore the pain. He could fight again, he could--and his stomach rolled until he rested his cheek on the edge of the tar vat, breathing heavily. Why fight when it only brought pain? 

Thor would have. The thick-headed lout would’ve counted all the stones in the nine realms out of stubbornness if he was of a mind to. 

Loki stared down at one pale, long-fingered hand. Not the great meaty fists of a warrior. No scars from carelessness, no calluses thick from stubbornness, only recent chapping from the cold and misuse.

He tipped the vat, pouring the liquid tar into the crater. 

“With your hands,” the Inquisitor repeated. 

Pain lanced up his spine, a warning. Shuddering, the king of nothing lowered his fine hands into the tar, smoothing it, guiding it into the remaining cracks until all was full and level with the floor. His hands stung and remained black for days after. The humiliation did not warm him as it would another man. Instead it chilled him, opening a small hole in his gut.  

The hole grew as the days drew on. The Chitauri fed him meager food, clothed him in simple, dark clothes and pressed him into service as needed. He came to hate them, though it was a passive hate born out of the promise of pain if he did not obey, and the knowledge that he would, eventually, surrender. He packed pride, ambition, and loneliness into a far corner of his mind where he could ignore it so long as he was on his knees and his hands busy. 

Loki found himself gladly kneeling when the Inquisitor bade him do so on bruised knees. It meant he could escape the nightmares of failure, the memories. He could bury them in slate dust and sweat and, on occasion, blood from the cracks on his black-stained palms. Even then his damnable mind was awake and willing to examine his situation, much as he cared not to. His shackles; energy inhibitors. The metal probes that lined his spine were nerve stimulators and chemical regulators, capable of twisting even a god into such pain that he wished he’d never been given a body to feel it with. His mind sometimes took a lazy spiral into wondering if they could cause enough agony to stop his heart. 

He was fixing the wiring to a string of hallway lighting when two armed guards pulled him away from his duties and took him down hallways he hadn’t passed through before. The floors began to slope up and stairs began, seemingly an endless spiral in the shape of some great beast’s skeleton. Loki found himself winded when they reached a plateau at the top of them. The platform was cast in the silvery light of a lone moon. A mighty chair sat in its midst, and next to it stood a dusky, hulking figure. It turned, pale purple eyes regarding the small contingent. 

“Sire, are you sure this is such a good idea?” The little weasel of an advisor simpered and scraped nearby. “He is offal, he is excrement brought in from who knows where--” 

The purple eyes drifted to the advisor, who tucked his clawed hands into the sleeves of his robe, bowed, and scurried away. 

Moving with the slow, deliberate grace of large beings, the hulking man--for man was the only thing it could be described as--settled himself on the huge, moonlit throne. 

The guards gripped him, pulling Loki towards the sitting figure. Despite his weakness, his surrender, Loki fought them. He wanted to be nowhere near this behemoth. Pain streaked through his extremities. They brought him stumbling and sick before the man on the throne. 

The large, pale eyes regarded him with impassive interest. A voice like a roll of thunder spread through Loki’s mind. 

“I welcome the King of Nothing to the throne of the Chitauri.”

The man made a gesture with two fingers and the guards grappled with Loki, trying to force him to his knees. Still, Loki fought them. The feeling of those large eyes on him unsettled the deepest pit of his stomach. 

“They will force you to surrender, pale one.” The voice came again and Loki stiffened mid-blow, a strangled cry emptying from his throat as pain flooded his senses, forcing him to his knees with his arms wrapped around his middle. 

“Is this not simpler?” The voice asked, somehow clear through the rushing in Loki’s ears. “Is it not a relief to find yourself overtaken? Held? Given a name and measured existence?”

Shuddering, gasping, it was all Loki could do to shake his head as he lowered to his knees.

The guards locked his arms behind his back. Gripping his shoulders and elbows, they pulled him closer to the throne.

“Soon you will understand,” said the voice. “You have already begun to learn.”

A large hand procured what looked like a necklace from the folds of the man-thing’s clothing. A glowing blue jewel was set heavily into its center. Not a necklace, Loki realized as it was looped around his neck and locked, a collar. The jewel pressed uncomfortably at the hollow of his throat, making itself known when he swallowed. 

“You come to us an outcast. Wandering, lost. I need not know your past to see your present. You were frantic, anxious. Now I see you collected, languishing in having a role you must fulfill.” 

“A king desires no such thing,” Loki answered through clenched teeth. 

The large man smiled. Loki shuddered.

“Sit by me, King of Nothing. Watch, learn.” 

The guards wrestled Loki to kneeling beside the throne, his shackles secured to rings set in the tar-black floor. The guards took their leave and returned minutes later with a trio of green-skinned people with large, blue within blue eyes. Emissaries and visiting dignitary, Loki guessed by their mannerisms. 

“Alzakad,” the large man boomed in their minds.  “Lord Thanos,” the noble said, sputtering, “what is this assault on my people? We have never desired more than to be left alone.”

“Your people are unruly, Alzakad. They struggle for a place in the universe. They crave a heavy hand to decide their fate.” 

Alzakad’s entreaties went on for some time, all of which Thanos brushed aside as a slumbering lion might twitch an ear at a fly. Then the three Chitauri guards that had escorted them moved forward.

The Chitauri became the envoys. The change was slow and creeping, but soon the Chitauris’ biomechanical bodies were hidden under the same smooth, green skin as their captives. 

Thanos waved one hand. “Dispose of them. Be sure to use their mannerisms when you approach the ship.”

With a quick nod, the guards departed from the throne room and back down the winding stairs with their screaming captives.

Loki swallowed and shut his eyes as he heard the wet sounds of flesh being disposed of. Needles of pain crawled up his spine, making him gasp and open his eyes again.

_ Watch, King of Nothing,  _ Thanos’s voice rolled through his head.  _ Learn what they have not. _

As he observed the bodies being hacked into small, manageable pieces, Loki felt his gorge rise.  _ They were weak, unbefitting rulers _ , a dark voice in his mind hissed. He shut his eyes tightly, tipping his head back, trying to relieve a sudden pressure in his forehead. The jewel on his collar dug into his windpipe. Then he opened his eyes, staring up at the spread of stars, and gasped, despairing. Despite being held in chains, at the beck and call of monstrous captors, he no longer feared the sky. 


	4. Four

In the following days, the scene Loki had witnessed with Alzakad and his people repeated itself in a slow procession. Loki watched the entreaties of emissaries, messengers, the promise of war from kings. From where he knelt beside the Chitauri throne, he saw them fall, and with them, their people and homelands. The Chitauri knew their game and played it well. Replace those in power with Chitauri clones until they had infiltrated every ruling system in place. Then an altering of laws, a change of morals, then the masses one day turned to find they had long been kneeling in the shadow of Thanos’s throne. It was insidious, terrifyingly effective, and brilliant. Despite the growing fear inside of him, the pit of complacency that had grown in him, Loki felt himself hard pressed to not admire the scheme. 

Such thoughts plagued him long after he’d been taken from the throne room and left in his dark cell. He often lay awake on the floor of his room, his mind burning with them. 

He could tell them of Asgard. He could watch his home world fall with such clamor it would shake Yggdrasil to its roots. Each time they brought him to sit at Thanos’s feet, the notion was there at the back of his throat, waiting for a breath to give it life. Just when he had an opportunity to do so, a younger voice within  him would wail, piercing through the shroud of vengeance long enough for him to see Asgard in ruins, its shining buildings reduced to rubble, the waters poisoned, those he’d once loved dead or enslaved. 

As much as he called himself weak, he could not stomach it. Asgard would be his, would shine once he returned victorious to claim his throne. 

And claim it he would. He saw his father’s game now. Loki had been too efficient a king, too good to let rule when it put them all to shame. They exiled him because he was of both Asgard and Jotunheim. He had been  _ better _ and they had feared it. 

_ Coward _ , his mind jeered.  _ Let them take Asgard. Watch it fall in cinders and let it blow away in the wind. Have your vengeance, King of Nothing. Earn your name and title instead of cowering in your failure.   _

Not Asgard, he pleaded. It was a memory--the only memory--he could hold away from the rest, and if he thought of younger days, he could remember happiness. 

A day came when he rose from the cold floor of his cell, awaiting the guards to bring him to his place next to Thanos’s throne, when not the guards, but the Inquisitor opened his cell instead, flanked by his aids. Loki swallowed his gorge and waited. He must’ve done something to displease his masters if they had sent the Inquisitor. As they trekked to the Inquisitor’s lair, he recounted the last few moonsets, trying to pinpoint his transgression. When he stood in the Inquisitor’s workroom he had come up with nothing. 

“Devest yourself, King of Nothing,” the Inquisitor hissed. 

With the shortest of pauses, Loki hid the shaking of his hands as he began to undress. The Inquisitor always took special glee in making him strip away his clothing, knowing how it unsettled Loki to stand naked in their midst. 

One of the aids dumped a pile of clothing into Loki’s arms. Loki stared at it, unsure, then a thread of pain wound its way up his spine.

“Dress,” The Inquisitor snarled impatiently. 

Loki redressed with great alacrity. A plain dark shirt, leggings and boots, followed by a sleek, dark robe, its sleeves long enough to fall over the manacles on his wrists.  

The advisor, Cthon, entered the dim room, strange hands in his sleeves as usual. He snarled something at the Inquisitor, then scuttled to Loki. 

The pain came so hot and sharp the room went dark. Loki caught himself on the edge of the Inquisitor’s metal table before he struck the floor. 

“Listen well, refuse,” Cthon hissed. “Lord Thanos has bestowed an honor upon your undeserving carcass.” He grasped Loki’s face in his clawed hand, talons digging into the soft flesh of Loki’s cheeks. “I will only inform you once.” 

Loki listened as warm blood trickled down the sides of his face. A ship was to bear him forth to the planet below. He was to speak with its acting rulers to peaceably surrender, then return with their answer. If he tried to escape, well, so much the better. Cthon smiled, showing his pointed teeth. “The Inquisitor misses you so.”

After being led onto the ship, Loki dabbed at his bleeding cheeks with the corner of his dark robe. Had he the choice, that simpering slug of an advisor would be face down in the stomach of a Leviathan. He sat when one of the guards shoved him towards a seat, taking pleasure in having a chair under him instead of a cold floor. He watched from the small window as the planet below grew larger, swirled blue and green much like earth. Loki clenched his jaw. He felt blood well on one cheek. Had circumstances been different, he could’ve taken control of this ship and escaped into an asteroid field. 

He felt the squeeze of the manacles around his wrists, the push of the chemical regulators along his spine. Instead he sat, powerless, surrounded by what were little better than semi-sentient ants with projectile weapons. 

Calm yourself, he soothed. There’s more to be learned, here. Loki held himself straighter in the seat. He could play the diplomat, there was no question about that. But why he’d been chosen was the greater mystery. Thanos had access to leagues of sniveling toadies like Cthon. To put a mistrusted thrall at the head of such an expedition was questionable at best. 

The ship grumbled and shook around them as they broke through the atmosphere. Loki gripped onto the edge of his seat as the rest of the occupants were jostled around. There, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a wink of metal. Some small piece of armor or weapon shaken loose and fallen to the floor. Loki did his best to keep his attention forward, listening as the ship docked itself in place. When his guards motioned him up, Loki did so without a fuss and caught one leg on nothing, toppling himself to the hard floor. 

Cursing him in their guttural tongue, Loki’s guards leveled kicks at him until he rose, the small bit of metal tucked away inside his robe. Flanked by his escorts, Loki brushed dirt from his garments as the ship’s plank was lowered and the small procession moved out. 

The sky was ocean green above them, a trio of large sister planets looming on the horizon as they walked from the landing pad and across a wide bridge. At the end, a glowing white building rose from the side of a mountain. Outside its gates stood a small military force, parted wide enough to allow their passage, yet close enough Loki’s glance couldn’t help but slide to their ranks, anticipating an ambush. The massive white doors opened before them and his escort didn’t so much as pause their march.

The ceiling above them disappeared into the shifting rainbow of a nebula riddled with stars. A map sprawling itself across the expanse of the receiving room. Had circumstances been different, Loki might’ve spent a good hour observing it, drinking in its complexities. As it was, he had focused on more pressing matters, such as a repeated presence of soldiers lining the long pathway before a dark dais supporting two pale thrones. A pair of guards wielding spears stopped them within shouting distance of the dais.

The being on the left throne tipped their head slightly, their words echoing throughout the chamber despite having not raised their voice.

“What brings a Chitauri parasite to the feet of the Odaiti?”

Loki schooled his expression into a stoic mask. “The Chitauri require your unconditional surrender of Odaiti and all its provinces.” The words felt ugly, ill-used even from his clear speaking of them. Had he not been given exact words to recite, he would’ve cut them down, left them bleeding and despairing in fewer syllables than it had taken them to insult him. 

The result was a barking laugh echoing off the white floors and shivering through the nebula above. “Arrogant of them. Tell them we will see them on the battlefield.”

Clenching his teeth, Loki inclined his head, never taking his eyes from the figures on the pale thrones. “Your answer is noted,” Loki replied. 

They encountered no resistance leaving the planet. When safely back in their ship, Loki sat as he had before, straight-backed and staring out the small window as the Odaiti planet shrank away from them. He had done as instructed, but felt as though he had missed something vital. Some small detail that would mean the difference between being left alone or punished upon their return. Loki tucked his hands into his sleeves and fished for the small piece of metal he’d secreted away. The noise of the ship engines was enough to cover the small scraping sounds of him prying at the manacle on his left wrist. Removing it entirely was out of the question, but disabling its mechanism would, in theory, allow him to use some of his power. Even the smallest amount was a hidden edge. Every small gesture inside the fabric of his sleeve, every breath, every blink seemed too harsh, telegraphing his plans to his guards, and the journey back to the homeworld too short. 

A chittering, rasping voice came over the intercoms to warn landing sequences had been initiated. Loki brought his hands to his face as if in despair and slid the piece of metal between his cheek and gum. His finer robes would no doubt be taken from him and replaced with ratty slave garments. 

His assumptions proved true as he was herded to the Inquisitor’s workroom and devested of his robes, his plain, dark tunic yanked back over his head as though he was deprived of even the luxury of dressing himself. Prepared to spend the rest of the moonrise alone in his cell or doing some menial chore, surprise overtook Loki when he found himself carted off to the room where he’d been first interrogated and had cracked the floor open in his fury. His wrists secured to the pillars embedded in the floor, Loki waited, eyes on the empty throne against the wall, his heart in his throat. The piece of metal hidden in his mouth grazed against his teeth. 

Cthon entered not long after, the Inquisitor following in his wake. It was a small comfort that Thanos had not accompanied them. 

Standing before him, Cthon bared his sharp teeth. “Kneel,” he hissed.

His eyes pinned on the Inquisitor, Loki went slowly to his knees. Cruel as he might be, Cthon wasn’t the thing to be feared. 

The toady paced a slow circle around where Loki knelt. “Tell me, carrion. What answer did the magistrates of Odaiti give you?”

“A laugh and promise to meet the Chitauri in battle,” Loki said.

Cthon hmmed to himself. “And the rest?”

“The rest…” Loki combed his memory for anything else he’d been told and arrived at nothing. “That was the extent of their words.”

“You noticed literally nothing else?”

Loki opened his mouth to retort and felt the bit of metal cut his cheek, dig into the flesh next to his gums. “I was told to deliver a message and an answer, nothing more,” Loki said through clenched teeth. He could taste the blood welling fast in his mouth. He had to appease Cthon and be gone before it started seeping from between his lips. 

Cthon seemed pleased. “As I thought. Thanos greatly overestimated your intellect.” The toady waved a dismissive hand. “Take him back to your workshop. Do something creative with him.”

Loki gripped the chains holding his wrists to the pillars. The pain in his cheek was becoming unbearable, but it was a pleasant intermission compared to what the Inquisitor could do when given leave. “They operate under bluster and misdirection,” Loki grated out, swallowing blood. “They put on a show of force but lack the military power to follow through.” That much he had gleaned from the receiving room. The Odaiti had gone one step too far, a little too desperate to make Loki and his contingent feel threatened. “Had I known I was to obtain  reconnaissance, I would’ve also delivered numbers,” he hissed out.

Cthon watched him, the main fingers of his hands steepled. Beside him the Inquisitor hovered, awaiting orders.

“Take him back to his cell for now,” Cthon said. “We’ll see how well his information holds up under scrutiny.”

The Inquisitor growled something unintelligible but did as he was ordered, marching Loki back to his cell with the occasional stab of pain down a leg, through an arm, around his ribcage. The door to his cell was in sight when the Inquisitor shoved him face first against the wall. Loki couldn’t help his sputter, the blood that he could feel dribble from the corner of his mouth. The back of his tunic was lifted, metal fingers touched the regulators protruding from his spine, a gesture he could feel in his teeth. Bile rose in his throat. Just as he thought he’d lost control and would vomit all over himself and the wall, the fingers stopped and his tunic dropped again. The floor of his cell was a welcome sight as it rose up to meet him, the door closing solidly behind him. 

Loki curled in on himself, waiting for his senses to calm. He parted his lips and sent a tentative finger to touch the inside of his cheek. The piece of metal came loose as he prodded and he extracted it between bloody thumb and forefinger. Wiping the bit of metal off on his tunic, he wedged its edge into one of the crevices on his left manacle again, trying to pry a bit off to see the inside. Between the hasty information he’d fed Cthon and having to hide the small tool, he had no time to worry about what the Inquisitor had wanted. Most likely to spook him. Loki wiped at the blood at the corner of his mouth with his sleeve.

_ Brother, if you could see me now.     _

The thought was sudden enough that Loki halted his tinkering. He took in the blood on his hands, the sliver of metal between his fingers, treasured beyond his dignity. How had he come to this? 

Loki threw the bit of metal at the wall where it bounced, then settled on the floor with a tiny clatter. He ran his fingers through his hair, now almost long enough to brush his shoulders, and clenched them until he could feel the pull in his scalp. Why he thought of her now, he didn’t know. Frigga, resplendent, gentle but unyielding, taking his hands in her own when he had failed at some feat Thor had conquered.  _ You cannot be your brother _ , she had said.  _ You must face the problem in your own way, Loki. _

In the darkness of his cell, Loki whispered to her, “I’m trying. Mother, I’m trying.”


End file.
